A whole new world
by Virtual Deliverance
Summary: An alternate continuity in which Clu's attempt to reach the real world is successful. Now, as a full-scale invasion is imminent, he masquerades as the charismatic CEO of ENCOM, Kevin Flynn. Rated M for violence.
1. A whole new world

Everything seemed over. Sam Flynn was standing inside the portal with Quorra, ready to bring her along. On the other side of the bridge, Kevin incited his son: "Sam! It's time!"  
>Sam lifted the disc over his head and opened his hands. As the disc was pulled up into the portal, Sam's virtual body gradually decomposed into a shining data stream.<br>"Goodbye, kiddo." his father said. Sam was returning to the real world.

As the light returned to normal, Kevin realized that something did not go as planned. Quorra was still there.  
>With a fluid motion, Clu backflipped onto the bridge and unhooked his disc. "Looking for this?" he said. He activated the disc. Immediately, a hologram of Kevin's - not Clu's - head, appeared in the middle. Kevin, his mouth agape in disbelief, stepped back involuntarily.<br>"Oh, don't be so surprised," Clu said in a patronizing tone, "we share the same thought patterns. I realized what you were up to even before you switched the discs, so I made a few switches of my own."  
>"You can't do that!" yelled Kevin. In response, Clu threw the disc at Quorra, who crumbled down into crystal-like cubes. "Wrong." replied Clu as the disc returned into his hands.<p>

Clu dashed into the portal and released the grip on Kevin's disc, the master key to transport any program to the analog reality. As the disc floated up and he turned into light, he managed to shout out a final "A whole new world awaits!"


	2. Out there

In the basement of Flynn's arcade, Sam, now dressed in civilian clothes, was waiting by the computer. A shape, made of cubes that turned smaller and smaller as their number increased, started materializing on the chair.  
>"Quorra!" Sam immediately called.<br>Clu, now completely materialized and still wearing his program outfit, leaped up and threw Kevin's disc, that sliced through Sam's neck like a hot blade through butter.  
>"Guess again." Clu replied to the detached head.<br>Approaching Sam's body, Clu lifted something from below. "And thanks for keeping my disc safe" he added. Then his attention was captured by the horizontal touch screen of the computer. He looked at the Unix command prompt that displayed the last activity: that was enough for him to understand how the system worked. He lifted Sam's decapitated body and severed head, put them in the chair, and activated the laser control program. They immediately dematerialized.  
>"This should give some more desperation to the old man." he chuckled. Then he decided to see the active processes and typed:<p>

ps -a -x -y

A long list appeared. His gaze was attracted by one particular element. He typed:

kill 2207

and then checked the process list again. As he got the confirmation that his command was successful, again he chuckled to himself: "The first time a program terminates a user."  
>After getting rid of the creator who illogically turned on him, it was time to reach the outside world.<p>

Clu left the basement and walked out of the arcade. The lights of the buildings, streets and cars in the night almost reminded him of the Grid, but everything was... different. Nothing had the smoothness that was so common in his world: all surfaces were irregular, with microscopic bumps and pits that looked almost like incredibly complex normal maps. "So inefficient" he thought. He closed his helmet and started walking along the sidewalk.

Further down the street, a biker parked his vehicle. Clu stopped in front of him.  
>"Who are you supposed to be? A Power Ranger?" asked the biker.<br>"Your lightcycle" said Clu. "Give it to me."  
>The biker dismounted. "Fuck you, freak!" he said, pushing Clu away. In response, Clu pushed him back, making him fall and hit his head.<br>The biker got up again and touched the back of his head. He was bleeding. He pulled a knife out of his pocket and flicked it open. "All right, asshole..." he said.  
>Completely unimpressed, Clu did not even attempt to move. The biker pushed him once more and stabbed him in the abdomen. Around the knife, a part of Clu's suit and body turned into small translucent cubes that fell on the pavement.<br>"What are you?" asked the biker, now scared.  
>"That is irrelevant" replided Clu. He unhooked his disc and decapitated the biker with a swift move. Finally, he jumped on the motorbike, started it and rode away.<p>

Some time later, Clu was out of the city, so he steered into a quiet unpaved road and stopped the motorcycle. He activated his disc and started examining his own code: a section of his triple-helix DNA was damaged. He picked the damaged part and rearranged some of its bytes. Immediately, the missing tissue and material in his abdomen regenerated. And that's when the lights of the nearby country house switched on.

A man stepped out of the house with a flashlight in his hands, walking toward Clu.  
>"Hey! Who are you? What are you doing here?" asked the man.<br>"None of your business" was Clu's reply.  
>"I'm calling the cops." said the man, pulling out a cell phone.<br>Clu replied: "No. You're helplessly writhing in pain." and threw the disc toward the hand that was holding the phone. The hand was cut off without any resistance.

As the man was helplessly writhing in pain, Clu picked up the phone and examined it. "A device connected to an information network. Finally." he said. Then he turned the phone over: the brand was "ENCOM Phone". "ENCOM" he added. "That's where I need to go."  
>Clu activated the Internet browser on the phone and typed an address:<p>

h t t p : / / w w w . e n . c o m

The touch screen of the cell phone displayed the main page of the ENCOM website, advertising the latest products. Clu touched the "Contact" link and reached a page that included a photograph of the senior staff. They were all wearing formal suits.  
>Clu looked at his program outfit. "But first, I need to look less conspicuous."<br>He abandoned the stolen motorcycle, and, with an effort of will, he deactivated the yellow lines on his outfit. Then he walked away.


	3. Encounter at ENCOM

The next morning, Clu was waiting by the ENCOM tower. He was now wearing a sober gray suit, indistinguishable from those of all the people who worked there.  
>Suddenly, a man caught Clu's attention. That man looked like Rinzler. Or better, like an aged version of Rinzler: his hair was gray, his face had wrinkles, his skin looked less firm and his gut was larger, but there could be no mistake: that man was Alan Bradley, the original creator of Tron.<br>Putting on the best smile he could, Clu approached him. "Hey, Alan!" he called.  
>Alan stopped in his tracks. He could not believe his eyes. "Kevin? Kevin Flynn?" he said.<br>"The one and only" Clu lied. "And I'm back with a vengeance."  
>"But how can you... You didn't age! How's that possible?" asked Alan.<br>"Remember the revolution I was talking about?" replied Clu. "This is just the beginning!"  
>"Wow," continued Alan, "wait till the others get a load of this!"<br>"Um, about that" added Clu, "I lost my pass."  
>"No problem, just come with me" concluded Alan.<p>

Alan led Clu to the office that handled the passes. Clu was photographed and was asked to have his thumb prints scanned. Everything went as expected and Clu was issued a brand new pass - in the name of Kevin Flynn.

As they walked in the corridors, Clu asked Alan who was in charge of the digitization program.  
>"Jet" replied Alan.<br>"Your son?" asked Clu. "Man, time flies. The last time I saw him, he was about this tall." he added, putting a hand near his hip.  
>"Would you mind to defer the reminishing?" said a voice behind them. "We have a bigger problem on our hands."<br>"Kevin, Edward Dillinger. Edward, Kevin Flynn." said Alan.  
>"You're not Ed Dillinger" said Clu. "He was older."<br>"I'm his son: Edward Dillinger, junior." said Edward. "And it was your son who stole our operating system last night."  
>"He did not!" rebutted Alan, sarcastically. He pointed to a pile of OS12 boxes nearby. "See? It's still there!"<br>"I suppose we're talking about the kind of theft that does not deprive the victim of his goods, right?" asked Clu.  
>"I, uhm, suppose so." replied Edward.<br>"By the way," continued Clu, "who deprived me of my rightful place as chairman of this company?"  
>"That's..." started Edward. Then, realizing that the person he was talking about was approaching, he whispered: "That's him. Richard Mackey."<br>Clu approached Richard Mackey. "Hi Dick" he said. "I'm Kevin Flynn, and you're fired."  
>Edward ran toward Clu, in complete disbelief. "Hey! You can't do that!" he said.<br>"Of course I can. I just did." replied Clu. "And about that little problem of yours, just give me an office and a computer. I'll solve it in few nanocycles."  
>"Nano..." Edward turned to Alan. "What's wrong with him?"<br>"Oh, that's just Kevin being Kevin." said Alan. "You know what he's like."  
>"No, I don't know!" replied Edward.<p> 


	4. Warez woes

Clu's fingers flew on the touchscreen. He had seen photographs of common models of computers on Wikipedia on the ENCOM Phone he stole, but the device he was given to use was so much better: just a smooth glass surface to touch, and every connection was wireless. It reminded him of the interfaces he was used to in the Grid. That, he learned, was an ENCOM Pad.  
>Indeed, on this side of the screen, everything was a lot easier. He saved the file, compiled it and ran it.<br>"This will take care of the leak." he said.  
>He picked up the telephone, dialed a number and asked to talk with the sales department.<br>"Recall every copy of OS12." he said. "Yes, every copy. No, not just the unsold ones. Yes, ask our customers to ship them back and charge the expenses to us. Because next Monday we'll release OS12 Second Edition. It will be a huge event. Tell the press."  
>He hung up and said: "This will take care of the rest."<p>

Clu walked out of his office, directed to Edward Dillinger's. "I am proud to announce that I solved our problems." he told Edward. "No more leaks, no more piracy, no more competition."  
>"What did you do, exactly?" Edward inquired.<br>"Heh." started Clu, with a grin. "I compiled and launched a worm that runs as root on any computer, disregarding the privileges of the current session. The first thing it does is to check for a copy of itself on any open connection, and if it does not find one, it creates it. The second thing it does is to run a cyclic redundance check on every compressed and uncompressed file in a computer. Every time it identifies a file as belonging to the leaked copy of OS12, it deletes it."  
>Edward Dillinger stared at Clu, his mouth agape. "You released a worm in the wild, from an ENCOM computer? Do you have any idea of what will happen to our PR?" he finally asked.<br>"Of course I didn't," Clu replied. "First, I was behind seven proxies residing in four continents. Second, I took control of a random computer at fCon. I compiled and launched the worm from there. If anything, I drove their PR into the ground."  
>"But if anyone connects to the Internet with OS12, his system will be erased!"<br>"With the version that's being recalled, yes." answered Clu. "On the other hand, the second edition will not work offline. Only if the computer is online and constantly connected to an ENCOM server, it will be authorized to run any program. And if our server detects a warezed version of OS12, it will send a command to delete every single file on the computer that's running it."  
>"But... but that's wrong!" exclaimed Edward, still stunned at what he was hearing.<br>"So, are you telling me that stealing our operating system was right?" Clu pushed.  
>"No, but..."<br>"Then what is your problem, exactly?" Clu interrupted Edward. "You can't have your cake and eat it too!"

Clu left Edward's office, directed to the digitization bay.


	5. Digitization

The digitization bay occupied a whole floor of the ENCOM tower. Most of it was filled with hardware: parallel clusters, lasers, particle traps; there were much fewer terminals than expected. One of them was occupied by a youthful man about 30 years old, who seemed very involved with the first-person shooter his computer was currently running.  
>Clu approached him silently.<br>"Colorful" Clu exclaimed, standing right behind him. The young man was startled.  
>"I'm sorry, I was just..." he started to say, but then he stood up and introduced himself: "My name is Jet Bradley."<br>"And I am Kevin Flynn, I'm sure you heard of me. So, are you in charge in here?" asked Clu.  
>"Yes." Jet answered.<br>"Wrong. I am." was Clu's reply. "There are going to be a few changes here."  
>"What?" asked Jet. "Are you firing me because I was playing a videogame I made?"<br>"Nobody said anything about firing anyone" said Clu. "I mean the equipment. I need to run a certain... experiment. I need my old computer and digitizing laser to be brought here from the basement of my arcade, and connected to our LAN. Do we have delivery men?"  
>"Yes."<br>"Then call one and tell him what I told you."

After the call, Clu approached Jet's computer.  
>"So, what's this?" he asked.<br>"This is Tron 2.0." answered Jet. "You know what happened to you in 1982? Something like that happened to me in 2003. That's a fictionalized account of it. Man, that Mercury chick was hot!"  
>"And you made this game as a shipping fan fiction, with yourself as the Mary Sue character, just because you could not have her in real life."<br>"Noo! I didn't mean..." Jet began. "Wait, are you a troper?"  
>"Since this morning. Surprised?" replied Clu. "But tell me: those weapons you use in the game..."<br>"They're all real."  
>"Excellent."<p>

Kevin's computer was placed next to Jet's desk, with the digitizing laser behind. Clu switched on the computer, connected a network switch to its 10BASE-T connector and ran a firewall script to reject any incoming or outgoing connection from any non-ENCOM computer. Finally, he typed:

touch /opt/LLL/run/ok  
>LLLSDLaserControl -ok 1<p>

The digitizing laser activated. Jet turned toward Clu and said: "Hey! What are you..."  
>Before Jet could finish the phrase, Clu was back in the Grid.<p> 


	6. Return

Clu materialized inside the simulacrum of Flynn's Arcade. He looked around and was was glad to notice that Sam's body and head had been disposed of.  
>There was a strange, rhythmic noise outside. Clu soon realized that there were thousands of voices, all calling his name in unison. Evidently, the preparations for his return did not go unnoticed.<br>He took his disc out of the jacket he was still wearing and activated it. He changed a code sequence, and his gray two-piece suit morphed immediately into his familiar program outfit.  
>"Ah, it's good to have my second skin back." Clu said.<br>He walked outside.

Thousands of programs were surrounding the building. As the main entrance opened and Clu showed up, they all cheered. Rinzler, who had been rectified again in Clu's absence, stood among them.  
>"Easy!" said Clu. Then he addressed the crowd. "The invasion will begin in three microcycles, the exploration mission in the user world was a complete success! I made a major discovery: our Grid is but one node of a much bigger universe, created not by one, but by billions of users. One of the other nodes contains weapons like we have never seen, which we will use to hasten our conquest!"<br>The crowd cheered again.  
>Rinzler approached Clu. "If the users are that weak, why get more weapons?"<br>"There's no kill like overkill." was Clu's reply. "Now tell me. Did the structure of the Grid change in any way, while I was gone?"  
>"Yes," Rinzler answered. "A new data stream has appeared."<br>"Good." Clu concluded. "Let's go."

The data stream was the manifestation of the network switch in the real world. In the Grid, it had the appearance of a circular platform, surrounded by a hologram that detailed the appearance of what lied on the other side. Rinzler and Clu stepped on it and immediately dematerialized.

Although it shared the smoothness and shinyness that were so common in the Grid, the place where they appeared was very different. It was brighter and more colorful, with lit surfaces shining of different shades of red, yellow and blue. The sky was a bright shade of orange, with clusters of information moving and twirling in different layers. The ground was gray, with etched patterns that made it look like an extremely complex circuit. All around were floating cubes, most of which were solid and brightly lit. Among them were transparent cubes containing tesseract-like shapes that moved continuously.

Clu approached one of the transparent cubes and touched its surface. Few seconds later, a hollow, glowing cylinder with a trigger materialized in his hands. He aimed it toward a group of solid cubes and squeezed the trigger. Immediately, the weapon shot out a spray of bright shards that hit several cubes and derezzed them.

Rinzler approached a different transparent cube, intent on trying it himself. What appeared in his hand was a glowing green ball that sprouted tendrils which wrapped around his arm. As he extended his arm, the ball shot a green projectile that hit the ground in a parabolic trajectory. The ground immediately cracked in the point of impact, forming irregular curved shapes that glowed in the same sickly green light as the ball.  
>"Viral infection" said Rinzler. "Too erratic."<br>He approached a third archive bin. This time, what he got was a purple triangular mesh shape that could either be held by one of its edges to shoot a burst of well-collimated energy blasts, or worn on one's hand like a glove. In this case, sparks would appear near the palm when flexing the fingers. Rinzler could not understand the purpose of that, until a local program nearby approached the infected part of the ground and started making repairs. With the mesh primitive on his hand, Rinzler aimed it toward the other program and flexed his fingers. Immediately, a stream of energy left the program and flew toward Rinzler, channeled into the mesh primitive. The program derezzed, while Rinzler realized he was feeling... stronger.  
>He turned toward Clu. "I like this!" he said.<p>

Meanwhile, Clu had found another weapon. It was another firearm, but more streamlined than the first one. There was a small spinning yellow ball on its stock, that displayed a zoomed section of what the weapon was aimed at. Clu pointed the gun toward a free space and looked into the yellow ball. He could see another program walking around, from a distance that had to be at least a mile. He aimed and pulled the trigger. The weapon shot a thin energy lance that hit the program and derezzed him instantly. In exhilaration, Clu laughed out loud.

With their new weapons, Clu and Rinzler stepped into the data stream again and found themselves back in their Grid.  
>Clu approached one of his soldiers. "Banach, I need your skills for this task".<br>"What is it, sir?" asked Banach.  
>"Make sure that there are enough weapons for every soldier." answered Clu.<br>Banach unhooked his disc off his back, activated it and put it on the ground. As he put one of the weapons on it, the weapon decomposed into a myriad of pieces that shifted, rotated and finally reassembled into two identical copies of the weapon. The two weapons then became four, then eight, then sixteen...  
>"That's the way." said Clu, walking past Banach and toward another soldier. "Baton." he added.<br>The soldier gave his baton to Clu, who used it to rez in a lightjet. He activated the lightjet and took off, directed to the portal.

Clu rematerialized inside ENCOM's digitization bay, his program outfit replaced by a gray suit again.  
>"...doing?" Jet concluded the phrase.<p> 


	7. True colors

Another employee in the level turned away from his terminal. "Hey! Who killed the antivirus and the backup script?" he exclaimed.  
>"That would be me! Sorry!" Clu said loudly in response.<p>

Clu turned toward Jet again and said: "The first experiment was a success. Now get my computer on the roof."  
>Jet stood up from his chair and looked around, to see if anybody was laughing at him. "Okay, whose idea is it?" he asked. "Where's the hidden camera?"<br>"This is serious business" said Clu. "My next experiment will be on a much larger scale, and a telefrag explosion would be... bothersome. Of course, if it does not bother _you_..."  
>"Um, yeah. No problem. I'll get your stuff moved." finally said Jet.<br>The computer and laser were taken to the roof, and Clu successfully digitized, brought back and duplicated a computer and a digitizing laser.

The next Monday, at noon, a huge crowd had gathered around the ENCOM tower, rhythmically calling Kevin Flynn's name. That was the release day of OS12 Second Edition, and everybody had been told that it would have been an unprecedented introduction.  
>For a while, everybody kept looking at the tower's roof, then, like a wave, people started turning and pointing toward another direction, in the sky.<br>Something big and bright, far away, was flying toward the building. It was Clu, flying a lightjet with the light ribbon activated for effect. At a certain distance from the tower, the lightjet derezzed, while Clu, in his program outfit, opened a lightchute and landed precisely on the roof. A thunderous applause exploded from the crowd.

Four megascreens, one on each side on the ENCOM tower, were switched on. They displayed a close-up of Clu's face.

"Whoo! What a ride!" exclaimed Clu, while the crowd started calling Kevin Flynn's name again.  
>"Oh, by the way," he continued, "this 'first-namelast-name' thing is so formal. Why don't we call each other with our Internet handles? I'm Clu."  
>In the crowd, some people started laughing, but were silenced when Clu resumed his speech.<p>

"Today, we're releasing OS12 Second Edition, the operating system that will solve all your security and piracy problems. Which is a big deal, but not the reason we are here."  
>People in the crowd looked at one another, perplexed.<p>

"As you may have noticed, I have not aged a day since the last time you saw me. Twenty years ago, I asked you to think of a world with no diseases, old age, wars, famine or death. Stop thinking. That world is here! A world where nobody ever dies or gets old, a world where you can go from Washington to Hong Kong in a matter of seconds, a world where users and programs live and work together as one people! This is my gift to you!"  
>In the crowd, people again were perplexed and asked each other: "What's he saying?" "Is he nuts?"<p>

"And now, let the fusion begin!" was the conclusion.

At that very moment, the digitizing laser on the roof shot a bright blue, whirling, pulsating column of energy toward the sky. Mere seconds later, a recognizer erupted out of it and started flying above the crowd. This was different from those in the Grid: a fine purple mesh, with intensely bright purple spots, had been added to its central section.  
>The first recognizer was soon followed by another, and another, to a total of ten. Finally, Clu's carrier, the Rectifier, came out of the column of energy.<p>

The recognizers stopped above the police cars at the outer edges of the crowd, then, following a gesture from Clu, fired energy blasts from their new mesh modifications, simultaneously. The police cars exploded, while the crowd was now panicking.  
>Not even a minute later, police and military helicopters started crowding the sky. Another gesture from Clu and the Rectifier emitted a spherical pulse wave that hit the helicopters. Immediately, their blades stopped and they crashed to the ground.<p>

Clu smiled, satisfied. That was only the beginning.


	8. Pax Tronica

Few hours later, newscasts all over the world reported the appearance of unidentified flying objects above the major cities, destroying sites of any political or military importance. The Air Force was dispatched, but in every case, the aircraft disappeared, exploded or just stopped working even before reaching visual contact.  
>There were also reports of computer monitors exploding and creating tall pillars of energy, from which the flying objects appeared. All computers involved were running the same operating system: OS12 Second Edition.<p>

In Washington, the President was giving a speech to the population, inviting people not to panic. The speech was abruptly interrupted when the carrier that was floating above the White House shot a sizzling heat beam at it, destroying it.

In North Korea, the military decided to launch a nuclear attack against the invaders. Missiles were fired from selected bases, but their engines abruptly switched off when the carriers hit them with their pulse waves. The missiles, now inert, plummeted to the ground, where they totally failed to explode. In retaliation, the carriers fired their heat beams at the bases that attacked them. Those exploded.

In Russia, a group of pilots managed to capture a lightjet and flew it toward a carrier, in the desperate attempt to start a counter-invasion. As they landed, they were immediately discovered and executed.

In Italy, the Prime Minister appeared on the six television channels he controlled, asking the population to be tolerant with the new immigrants and not fall prey of irrational xenophobic feelings. He was decapitated in front of the cameras by an elite Black Guard, who addressed the viewers ordering them to swear eternal allegiance to Clu.  
>Most Italians rejoiced.<p>

In Lybia, after finding next to zero resistance, Clu's Sentries and Black Guards were busy capturing the local people and escorting them on recognizers to lead them to rectification.  
>Some villagers decided to react in the only way they knew: they built an explosive device that one of them strapped to himself. Yelling "ALLAHU AKBAR!" he ran toward a group of programs, then released the dead man's switch he was holding and blew himself up, causing one of the programs to partially disassemble into translucent cubes that were launched in every direction.<br>However, just after passing the apices of their parabolas, every single cube inverted its direction and the program came together again. He turned toward another program.  
>"Curious" he said. "This user just helped us."<br>"Peculiar indeed." replied the other program.

All over the world, programs were now marching the streets, while the people they met were either led to rectification or killed. The destroyed buildings were gradually replaced by structures in the same architectural style that could be found in the Grid. Rectified citizens were given identity discs and program outfits.  
>With a single government for the entire planet, there would be no more wars. With everybody's physical structure being available as easily modifiable code, there would be no more death, old age or famine. With digitization technology available for everyone, people could appear anywhere around the globe, and so could programs. With everybody's thoughts under Clu's control, there would be no more freedom.<p>

The Pax Tronica had officially begun.


	9. The problem of irrationality

At thirty days into the new global peace, Clu was monitoring his citizens' thought patterns at his console in what used to be the ENCOM tower. And he did not like what he saw. "Rinzler!" he called.  
>"Yes, sir?"<br>"Get me Alan Two."  
>"Yes, sir."<p>

Before the new order, Alan Two used to be Jet Bradley, in charge of the digitization program at ENCOM. After his rectification, now wearing an armored program outfit marked with a tangle of orange lines on multiple layers, he was in charge of brainwave translation. He entered the room and approached Clu's command console.  
>"Alan Two reporting, sir." he said.<br>"Look at these signals." said Clu. "Tell me. What do you see?"  
>"They are unhappy, sir." Alan Two answered.<br>"I can see that." Clu added. "What I want to know is why!"

Alan Two pondered over the waveforms for some instants.

"They remember, sir." he started. "We gave them incorruptible bodies and eliminated death, but they still have emotionally charged memories of their previous imperfect lives. They long for them. They long for imperfection."  
>"That is certainly illogical, as history shows they longed to overcome those problems." Clu replied.<br>"Those are the symptoms of nostalgia." Alan Two said. "Human minds get used to habitual forms of sensory input, to the point that they miss them when they are absent."  
>Clu considered the new information for a couple of seconds. "Maybe the answer lies in their way of conceiving pleasant and unpleasant stimuli. What does their literature say?"<br>"Well, sir - you may find this interesting." Alan Two began. "The vast majority of the books I scanned contain the idea that the most unpleasant conceivable stimulus is an eternity of excruciating burning pain distributed all over the body, coupled with an overwhelming odor of putrefaction and the screams of billions of other people suffering the same fate."  
>"That makes sense." said Clu. "But...?"<br>"But," continued Alan Two, "the same books suggest that the most pleasant conceivable stimulus is an eternity spent contemplating... light."  
>"Now, that does not make sense." commented Clu.<br>"Indeed, sir." Alan Two started again. "Trying to deduce the polar opposite of the most unpleasant conceivable stimulus, I discovered other literature explaining the role of the nucleus accumbens, the most frontal part of the brain, in the perception of pleasure. That could be the most pleasant conceivable stimulus. An eternity of electrical stimulation of the nucleus accumbens in the brain."  
>"Thanks, Alan Two." said Clu. "You've been certainly useful. Adapting the rectification process to the new information will require some recoding."<p>

In short time, every rectified citizen was implanted with an array of electrodes that provided constant stimulation to their nucleus accumbens, providing them with perpetual artificial pleasure.

Humanity lived happily ever after.


	10. Epilogue

The world had been completely rectified. Nothing, save for the stars in the sky, provided any clue that it ever looked any different from the Grid. Users could no longer be told apart from programs.  
>Clu was on the roof of his tower, contemplating his domain.<p>

"Sir." said a voice behind him. It was Rinzler. "Now that the rectification process is finished... what do we do?"  
>Clu turned toward Rinzler. "Finished?" he asked, then turned back to gaze at the horizon again. "No. Not even close. There are so many places left to rectify."<p>

In the distance, programs and users were building a spaceship.


End file.
